


Forget-Me-Not

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, City of Light (The 100), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Memory Loss, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Rough Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:20:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6663955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What is it that we are trying to say, and why do we use flowers to try to say it? . . . We plant, we nurture, we grow and we give, different flowers for different moments in time, but all for the same purpose: to say that which cannot be said.”  <br/>--Vanessa Diffenbaugh, <em> A Victorian Flowers Dictionary </em></p>
<p>Abby returns from the City of Light with all her memories back . . . and everyone else's, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rosemary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **_“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.  Pray you, love, remember.”_ **  
> **\--Ophelia, from** **_Hamlet_ ** **by William Shakespeare**

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Abby says kindly to the man on the table, and it’s true.  She doesn’t.

It would all be so much simpler if she’d simply been permitted to give him the key – she wanted to give him the key, she asked Thelonious so many times.  But the two men who came to Polis this morning are part of a different plan, apparently, and ALIE needs them to hold onto their pain for a bit longer.  When Abby asks why, Thelonious puts a hand on her shoulder, warm and comforting, and tells her that isn’t something she needs to know about, and she should put it out of her mind.

So she does.

Her job is very straightforward.  The man on the table knows something and she needs to make him tell her.  “By any means necessary,” says Thelonious, and she nods to show she understands.

Thelonious tells her what to do, and now she must do it, and trust him – as she always has, because they have been friends for twenty years, he says, and they’ve always trusted each other – that he is doing the right thing.

Which of course he is, because anything that brings more people to the City of Light with them is the right thing to do.  “Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them,” Thelonious says, and this makes sense to Abby.

“Like forcing a child to brush her teeth,” she agrees, almost absentmindedly, then stops suddenly, wondering where those words came from.

She would know if she had a child, of course.  That isn’t the kind of thing a person forgets.  But it's so clear in her mind, just for a moment – not a memory, not even a thought, just a flash, a small hand holding a toothbrush and her own hand wrapped around it – but then it's gone a moment later, so quickly she's sure she imagined it.

It’s so comforting, not to have to _think_ about things, or _know_ things.  Everything in the City of Light is simple.  Abby knows there was a Before in her life, knows there was a time that she did not know this sense of inner calm and peace.  But she doesn’t remember it now.  She knows that she fought it, at first – Thelonious has told her this – that before she understood how wonderful it was here, she had had to be forced to take the key, and forced time and time again after that to yield until the last of her resistance was gone.

She doesn’t remember _how_ she was forced, and she also doesn’t remember how Jackson got that cut on his neck, and she also doesn’t remember exactly why it is that she feels somehow like those two things are connected, but Jackson still gives her that sweet smile every time he sees her and so obviously it must be all right.

Besides, Thelonious is her oldest friend (she doesn’t quite remember this but it’s what he tells her, so of course it must be true) and cares for her deeply, and she knows enough now to be grateful that he showed her the way.  “Even Abby resisted at first,” he tells newcomers, “and look at her now.  My right hand.”  And they trust Abby, so one by one they come and take the key, and she feels nothing but joy as more and more of her people join them in the City of Light.

Her resistance was stronger than the others, ALIE has said to her over and over in a voice full of something like respect, and she sowed discord inside the City of Light with her periodic attempts to escape, making it unfortunately necessary to subvert her free will and permit ALIE complete control.  But that's fine.  Of course it is.  Because if she needed those memories, ALIE would have allowed her to keep them.  But what use are they, in the City of Light, where only the present moment matters?  And so she helps Thelonious bring their people to their new home, one by one, and then she follows him to Polis to begin the next stage of their plan, and when he or ALIE give her instructions she does not ask any questions, and everything is beautiful and simple.

And so she does not quite know why it is that the man on the table makes her feel ever so faintly unsteady, or why she wants so badly to convince Thelonious to let her give him the key.  She does not quite know why it matters so much to her that the man on the table not feel any pain.

But it does matter.

And ever so faintly at the back of her brain there’s a tiny, dim, distant humming, like an alarm bell ringing miles and miles away, which makes ALIE turn to look at her curiously, her head tilted as she regards Abby with that blankly interested gaze that means she is processing new information.

She tries one last time.  “If we give him the key,” she explains to ALIE, “then you’ll know everything he knows.  We won’t have to hurt him.”

“It may not be necessary to hurt him a great deal,” says ALIE in that cool, composed, reassuring voice.  “Jackson has identified his point of greatest weakness.  Thelonious is hopeful that he will provide us the information we need if this weakness is properly exploited.”

“What is it?”

“You,” ALIE says to her, and this time when the alarm bell goes off it’s ever so slightly louder, and she knows that ALIE can hear it too.

“Begin,” ALIE orders her, and so she does.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” she says to him, looking down at the rusted-out metal table where the man – broad-shouldered and tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick beard – lies strapped down in front of her.  The man he came in with, the one called Pike, is no longer her concern; he has been handed over to Ontari and has no part in this plan.  So even though the man on the table begs her for information about what has become of Pike, she can’t tell him anything.

And this is curious too, she thinks, because shouldn’t he beg for mercy? Shouldn’t he be asking what’s about to happen to _him?_  Why is his only thought for the safety of somebody else when he knows he’s about to be tortured?

 _Typical,_ says a voice in her mind with an exasperation that is tinged with something like fondness, and the thought in Abby’s head startles both her and ALIE simultaneously.

“Do I know him?” she asks ALIE, greatly confused.  “I must know him.”

“Abby,” says the man on the table, and he says her name as though he’s said it a hundred thousand times before, as though the shape of it is familiar in his mouth.  “Abby, you have to try.  Try to remember.  The chip took your memories away, but you have to fight.”

“His name is Marcus Kane,” says ALIE over Abby’s shoulder, and she seems as relieved as Abby when his name doesn’t set off the alarm in her mind again.

She’s safe.

The City of Light is safe.

Everything will be all right.

There’s no need to worry.

“He may have vital information on the whereabouts of the second version of my program,” says ALIE.  “We need to know where they’ve taken it.”

And there it is, as clear as day, the picture in Abby’s mind.  She’s looking out through someone else’s eyes, she’s in a bedroom somewhere, a golden-lit room cluttered with things and people, and there’s a tiny metal box on a table she can’t reach and she knows, she _knows,_ the second version of ALIE is inside it, and even though by the time their scouts arrived at the trading post the people and the metal box were gone, and even though when she asks whose vision that was and why they can’t tap into their memories again Thelonious doesn’t answer her, this is the best information they have.  She sees the faces in the room in her mind, and because the person whose memories she is sharing – whoever that person is (how can she share someone’s memories without being able to feel the person right there beside her, as though someone had _disconnected_ from the City of Light?) knew all their names, now Abby knows them too.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” she says again, trying to sound gentle so the man won’t be afraid.  "But something has been taken from us and we need it back.”

“Abby, I need you to listen to me,” he begins, his voice low and urgent, and there it is again, the way he says her name, why is he saying her name like that, why is there so much _weight_ to it, how can a man she doesn’t remember know her well enough to say her name that way?

The alarm rings again, and ALIE’s brow furrows, so Abby decides to read him the names that hover over the faces in her mind-picture.  “Bellamy Blake,” she says first, and the man on the table goes pale.  “Octavia Blake.  Jasper Jordan.  Monty Green.  Clarke – “

She stops.

The alarm is ringing louder now.

The man on the table is looking at her, not worried, not afraid, but somehow . . . _encouraging_?  Can that be it?  Like he’s trying to draw something out of her.

“Clarke Griffin,” she tries again, and the words feel familiar but she doesn’t know why.   _Clarke.  Clarke.  Clarke_.  It’s as though her mouth is used to saying it, forms the sound with no effort at all.  “Clarke Griffin.”

“You remember her,” says the man on the table.  “It’s not all gone, Abby, she’s still in there.  Clarke is still in there.”

She doesn’t know what makes her think about the tiny hand holding the tiny toothbrush again, or why it takes a little longer this time for ALIE to gently push the thought out of her mind.

“They are in hiding,” says ALIE.  “Possibly with others.  Clarke Griffin has the program and we need to know its whereabouts.”

She knows the man on the table can’t see ALIE, or hear her, so he must have read her mind.  “You can torture me as long as you want,” he says firmly, “but I promised you I would keep Clarke safe.  I’m going to keep all of them safe.”

And there it is again, as she hears his voice form the word, the distant alarm bell, still faint but a little less so than before because _why does she know that name?_

“She’s your daughter,” he says to her, reading her mind again, answering the question she hasn’t asked, and she’s so startled she drops the long metal nail she’s holding in her hand.  (There are two of them.  There’s a wooden plank outstretched beneath the man’s arms and one nail for each palm, to secure him in place, though she’s still hoping it won’t come to that.)

“I have a _daughter_?” she says in wonderment.

“This is irrelevant information,” says ALIE, her soothing voice caressing Abby’s mind from the inside and brushing away all the things she doesn’t need.  “Clarke has taken something that does not belong to her.  We need to get it back.  That is the only thing that matters.”  And Abby nods, because she trusts her, because she can feel the gentle touch of another mind inside her mind, and the alarm bell is silenced for now.

“Just tell us what we need to know,” she says, a little more firmly this time, but he just shakes his head, so she picks up the metal nail again.  There’s a dull iron mallet laying on the small table beside her, and she picks it up too.

“I’m going to have to put this nail through your hand,” she says gently, kindly, encouraging him to do the sensible thing.  “I don’t want to have to do that.”

“Human nature is designed for the avoidance of pain,” says ALIE, and Abby knows they are both hopeful that the nail won’t be necessary.  But he doesn’t seem frightened by it, or her.  He looks worried – desperately worried – but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the instruments of pain in her hand.  It seemed, on the contrary, very much more to do with the list of names she just said.

She doesn’t understand this at all.

_Why is he not attempting to avoid pain?_

“She’s eighteen years old,” says the man, and he's not thinking about the nail or the hammer at all.  “She was born on the Ark.  Do you remember anything about the Ark?”

“The Ark,” she repeats blankly, and she doesn’t remember, not really, she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and yet she finds her gaze drifting out the window and up into the sky.

“That’s right,” he prompts her, following her eyes.  “It was in space. We lived on a ship in space.  You were a doctor.  We served on the Council together.  Do you remember?”

“Just tell me where Clarke and the others are hiding,” she says, trying to sound gentle, non-threatening, trying to tell him with her voice how much easier this would go for him if he just told her the truth.

“I can’t do that,” he says, and he doesn’t even seem afraid of the weapon in her hand, he’s so resistant, and she knows ALIE wants this done quickly and she shouldn’t waste time but she’s suddenly so curious.

“I’m going to have to _hurt_ you,” she explains.  “Human nature is designed for the avoidance of pain.”

“I promised that I would keep her safe,” says the man on the table.  “I promised the real Abby Griffin I would take care of her daughter.  I won’t let ALIE have her.”

“But she took something that belongs to us,” says Abby.  “We need it back.”

“If she took something from ALIE,” says the man defiantly, “then it’s something ALIE shouldn’t have.  I can count on one hand the number of people in all this world I trust more than Clarke Griffin.  Whatever she has, I want her to keep it far away from you.”

When she takes his hand in hers, to spread his fingers out flat against the wooden plank, something begins to echo in her mind.  Has she touched this hand before?  How could that be, if she doesn’t remember any of it, doesn’t remember _him?_

“Abby,” says ALIE in a stern voice.  “You are wasting time.”

She presses his fingers flat against the wood, then lifts her hand away and gently places the nail on the back of his hand, perfectly centered, and lifts the mallet to strike.

Then “What are you wearing around your neck, Abby?” asks the man on the table, desperate, a last-ditch effort, but it works, it stops her, and she freezes with the mallet halfway in the air.

_One ring on her hand, another on a chain._

 

_Both hers?  No, one is a man’s ring, it’s too big for her, that’s why it lives on the chain around her neck –_

_But where is he?  Who did the ring belong to, and why isn’t he wearing it?  
_

_Someone gave it to her.  Placed it in her hand.  Was it a gift?  No, because she was crying –_

_Why was she crying?_

_Who wore that second ring?_

_“Jake,”_ she exclaims suddenly, and the man’s head snaps up as the mallet drops from her shaking hand.  “Jake.  His name was Jake.”

“Abby, this is pointless,” says ALIE in her gentle cool voice, moving faintly, menacingly closer, but Abby shakes her head, presses outward with the full force of her mind, because it’s _there,_ something is _there,_ hovering frustratingly just out of reach, just beyond her peripheral vision, and it’s like trying to grasp smoke in your hands but she’s trying _so hard_ to reach it –

“Yes,” says the man on the table, and his voice is exultant, relieved, almost triumphant.  “ _Yes._  His name was Jake.  He was your husband for twenty years, Abby, and you loved him.  You loved him so much.”

“Jake,” she says again and again, as the faintest whisper of a shadow of a face flickers dimly into view before disappearing again, snuffed out like the light of a candle.

“Jake,” he repeats back to her, eyes are shining with tears.  “He died, Abby.  The ring on your hand was yours, and the ring around your neck was his, and he gave it to you before he died.”

“He’s dead?” she asks him, confused and suddenly desperately, achingly sad.  “Did I want to forget him?  Is that why I took the key?”

“No, Abby,” he says to her firmly, insistently, “you didn’t want to forget.  You’ve worn that ring every day since he died.  I don’t know how you ended up here and I don’t know what they did to you, but you didn’t take the key because you wanted to forget.”

“Jake,” she says again, and then it hits her with the force of a thunderbolt.   _“Jake and Clarke.”_

She doesn’t see them, she can’t remember, she can’t see their faces in her mind, but she _knows._  The little hand holding the little toothbrush and the ring on her finger and the ring around her neck are all connected, she knows they are, and she can’t silence the ringing of the alarm now, because _she has a daughter she can’t remember_ and the only thing in the whole world that feels real to her is the man on the table and the way his dark eyes are beaming up at her, and it startles her anew how unafraid he is, how he should be begging for mercy and instead his face is aglow with joy that she suddenly knows Jake’s name.

She still does not remember him, not really.  ALIE told her his name, but she’s already forgotten it.  She can’t recall how she met him, how long they’ve known each other, or who he really is.  But she looks down at him and he looks up at her and the alarm inside her mind begins to shriek with a deafening klaxon wail because she’s remembered the most important thing.

“I love you, don’t I?” she says to the man on the table, her brow furrowed, trying to remember, and underneath the grime and sweat and the streak of blood from the cut on his temple his whole face lights up like the sun is rising.

“Yes,” he says to her, smiling.  “I think you do.”

Then the alarm stops, and Abby feels a sudden wild clench of panic.

“Let me in,” ALIE says in her cool, clear voice, but Abby doesn’t want to this time, she wants to remember, she wants it back, she doesn’t want to be here anymore, she wants to get out of the City of Light, she’s pushing back as hard as she can, like she’s done so many times before . . .

And then it’s all over, ALIE has won again, she has taken control of the reins and Abby’s memories are neatly wiped away once more.

She remembers picking up the mallet again, but she doesn’t remember a thing after that.


	2. Willow

The first thing that happens is _pain._

Pain all over.

Pain in her right arm and shoulder, throbbing with a heavy dull ache where she fell, hard, on the dusty ground of the Polis marketplace.

Pain cold and sharp at the back of her neck (where, she learns later, the remains of the A.I. were surgically removed from her brainstem).

Pain on her cheek, where Raven is leaning over, slapping her face with more and more desperate force – the only clue anyone ever gives Abby to how close she came to not making it out alive – and repeating “Abby, wake up, come on, come on, wake _up_ , Abby!” in a voice humming with panic.

Pain, brutal and agonizing, in her thigh – just above the scar she bore from Mount Weather – where an inexpert, amateur bandage conceals a knife wound that she does not remember getting until the rifle lying by her side and the memory of what ALIE had ordered her to do with it come roaring back to her.  (Indra has never been _thanked_ for stabbing someone before, and under different circumstances her expression of astonishment would be comical.  But she threw that knife while sprinting hell-for-leather across the marketplace before Abby pulled the trigger and fired at the barrel of weapons-grade explosives with which ALIE had planned to level the city of Polis, and while Abby felt no pain, she stumbled just long enough for Jasper Jordan to get to her and knock her out with one of her own Reaper sticks.  Which means that Indra’s knife kept Abby Griffin from blowing up a city with everyone in the world she loves inside it.  Which means that whether Indra wants one or not – and she clearly does not – she receives a bone-crunching embrace from Abby Griffin.)

After Raven has helped her to her feet, Indra – after grudgingly enduring her hug – puts her arm around Abby’s waist to support her as they make their way through the square.  Clarke and Jackson were both inside the City of Light when it began to collapse, but when ALIE was destroyed it severed the connection.  Now Abby stands in the center of a street that looks like a battlefield, bodies moving and unmoving spread across the city as the handful of kids who saved them all run from person to person, expertly removing A.I. shrapnel from their spinal cords.  (Jasper Jordan did hers, she learns later, his hands careful and steady.  She’s impressed with his precise incision when she examines it later on the diagnostic screen in Medical.  It will heal cleanly, with only a small scar.  She’s grateful, and a little proud.)

They find Jackson first, and there aren’t any words for the things that have passed between them.  Neither of them can speak.  His eyes are tear-stained, dark with guilt and shame, but she doesn’t hesitate as she lets go of Indra to pull Jackson tightly into her arms.  Jackson is not Thelonious.  Jackson had perfect trust that the promises of the City of Light were true. All he wanted was the ability to treat his patients without drowning in the accumulated ocean of all their collective pain.  So much death, so much suffering, so much loss, but Jackson had only wanted to be a better doctor.  Abby does not say “I forgive you” with words, because the words themselves would pain him.  She wishes there was a way to say it without words, but there isn't.  So instead she kisses the top of his head and whispers, “We made it.  We’re going to be okay.”

Raven calls her name just then, and Abby looks up, and feels her heart stop beating.

Raven is kneeling about a hundred feet away where a heap of bodies fell all together.

One of them is moving, and Abby can see, through the sharp stinging haze of the tears that threaten to blind her, a flash of white-gold hair.

Raven has found Clarke.

Jackson and Indra half-support, half-carry her over to where Bellamy is kneeling at Clarke’s side, wiping off a bloody scalpel as Raven bandages the back of Clarke’s neck where a thin ribbon of red marks the removal of not one but two A.I.’s.  Abby drops to the ground, her own pain forgotten, and seizes Clarke in her arms.

“Mom,” Clarke croaks out in a hoarse, rough voice, collapsing against Abby’s shoulder, and that’s when it happens.

> _Abby’s eyes, blank and unseeing, as Bellamy gently explains to her that Clarke did not come home._
> 
> _Clarke with stained red hair and ragged clothes, half-feral, killing wild animals for food._
> 
> _Marcus Kane taking Abby’s face in his hands and pressing a sudden, startling, ferocious kiss onto her mouth._
> 
> _Clarke’s naked body entangled with Lexa’s in a sun-dappled bedroom in Polis._
> 
> _Abby in Jaha’s office, begging him to talk Jake out of going public about the oxygen crisis._
> 
> _Clarke’s hand in a metal gauntlet, alongside Bellamy’s, pulling a lever._
> 
> _Abby in the airlock, facing a tearful Jackson and Callie, as a stone-faced Kane prepares to float her._
> 
> _Clarke leaning in to press a last soft kiss on Finn Collins’ mouth as she gently slips the knife between his ribs and into his heart._

The force of all the things they know about each other now – things they’ve never said – crashes over them both like a tidal wave and they pull apart, eyes wide, staring.

They know everything.

And they can feel it in the air, that Jackson and Raven know everything too.

Which means _all of them do._

Abby looks up at Raven and feels the information pass between them like bytes of data running back and forth along the wires and circuits of a computer.   All the things about Raven she has no right to know, because Raven never consented to tell her, now echo in her brain, clamoring for attention, different thoughts bubbling to the surface to surprise her, like a solo instrument rising forth for a moment from the smooth harmonics of a symphony orchestra.  Raven’s mother.  Raven and Finn.  Finn and Clarke.

 _I have no right to know these things,_ Abby thinks desperately, but she can’t un-know them.  They are now her memories as much as they are Raven’s.  Which means, she realizes as she sees Raven break eye contact and stare awkwardly at the ground, that her own memories are Raven’s now too.

And Jackson’s.

And Clarke’s.

 _How will we go on like this?_ Abby wonders to herself, before she is pulled out of her reverie by Clarke asking her a question that startles all the breath out of her lungs.

“Mom,” says Clarke urgently.  _“Where’s Kane?”_

* * * * *

It takes Indra a long time to find him.

Jackson stays beside her and Clarke, worried, fussing a little, constantly checking their vitals as though he himself hadn’t just woken up in the same condition.  “I’m fine,” she tells him for the hundredth time, and as he presses his fingers to her wrist to check her pulse, there it is again.

A thing she shouldn’t know.

 

> _Abby is in Medical, sedated.  Jackson is cleaning and dressing the gaping wound in her thigh, swallowing hard at the thought of Abby and all those kids chained up inside a mountain.  He tries not to think about how hard she must have screamed, as he realizes that the drill went all the way into the bone.  Marcus is pacing back and forth in the corner, far enough from the operating table to be out of Jackson’s way but not far enough that he isn’t distracting._
> 
> _“Please,” says Kane, and there’s something startlingly raw in his voice that makes Jackson look up at him in confusion.  “Is she going to be okay?”_
> 
> _“She’ll be fine,” says Jackson, a little shortly, but Kane doesn’t notice his tone.  Kane barely notices Jackson.  He’s just looking down at Abby, his face drawn and haggard with worry._
> 
> _“They tortured the kids,” he says.  “A girl died.  Her name was Fox.  She was one of ours.  Did you know her?”_
> 
> _“No.”_
> 
> _“And Raven Reyes too.”_
> 
> _“I know,” says Jackson.  “Lincoln’s bringing her in next.”_
> 
> _“I couldn’t save Abby,” says Kane, and his voice is cracked and desolate.  “I couldn’t stop it.  I’m so sorry.”_
> 
> _Jackson looks up at him, startled.  “Why . . . why are you apologizing to me?” he asks, utterly baffled._
> 
> _“Clarke’s gone,” says Kane.  “And Abby can’t hear me.  There’s no one else for me to apologize to.”_
> 
> _Jackson looks at Kane._
> 
> _Kane looks back at Jackson._
> 
> _“I know what you’re thinking,” says Kane.  “And you’d be right to think it.  One more scar on her body, because of me.”_
> 
> _“That isn’t what I was thinking,” says Jackson, but they both know it’s a lie, they both know that Jackson is remembering a ball of antiseptic-soaked cotton held in a long pair of forceps that he uses to gently clean the stinging shocklash wounds on Abby’s lower back while she winces at his every touch.  They both know that Jackson is thinking about standing beside Callie Cartwig at the Mecha Station airlock while Kane’s hand hovers over the button that would open the outer doors and send Abby Griffin to her excruciating airless death._
> 
> _“I haven’t earned the right to worry about her like this,” says Kane heavily.  “I know that.  But I do anyway.”_
> 
> _“All you’ve ever done is hurt her,” says Jackson, and the words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them, but Kane just nods like it confirms something he already knew._
> 
> _“Just promise me she’ll be all right,” he pleads.  “I couldn’t live with myself if – “  Then he stops, shakes his head as if unable to go any further, and abruptly turns to disappear out the door._
> 
> _Jackson watches him go._ No, _he tells Marcus Kane firmly in the silence of his own mind._ You don’t deserve her.
> 
> _“Jackson,” he hears Abby whisper in a faint, raspy voice, and instantly he’s there, squeezing her hand, smiling down at her._
> 
> _“You’re going to be okay, Abby,” he says in a reassuring voice.  “I promise.”_

Jackson lets go of her wrist and looks at her curiously.  She realizes she’s staring.  He doesn’t know what private hope or fear or thought of his has floated uninvited into her mind, but he knows she has his memories because he has hers too.  So Abby knows that Jackson has never forgiven Marcus for shocklashing her, and Jackson knows that Marcus kissed her, and neither of them can say anything, and it will be like this forever.

But there will have to be time, later to think about that – to think about what all of that means – because a man with torn, bloodstained clothes, a limp, and scarlet-stained bandages around his hands is sprinting out of the Polis tower and running towards her like his life depends on it, and he doesn’t need the City of Light to make him forget about his pain because Abby can tell from the look on his face as he flies across the blood-soaked streets that until this moment Marcus Kane thought she was dead.

He doesn’t seem to notice his own wincing.  He is bleeding from a gash above his left knee, and a cut above his temple that looks like it came from somebody’s fist, and someone with no idea what they were doing has haphazardly wound strips of cloth around his hands, where terrifying rust-covered bloodstains have soaked through.  But he doesn’t register any of it.  He simply drops to his knees where Abby is sitting beside Clarke and pulls her into his arms.

He holds her there for a long time, cradled against his chest, and she sinks into the warm, comforting strength of him, until the feeling of a rough bandage scratching against the back of her neck where he has buried his hands in her hair startles her back to reality again.

“Oh God,” she says to him, seizing his hand in hers and unwrapping the bandage to see a perfectly circular wound in the center of his palm – almost surgical in its precision – where a nail was driven through it.  “Oh God, Marcus, your hands.”

“It’s okay,” he says to her, with something in his voice she doesn’t understand, as he closes his eyes and lets her gently caress his hand.  Raven has a med kit with her, swiped from the Arkadia store rooms – all the kids who were helping remove A.I. implants do – and she hands antiseptic and a roll of clean bandages to Abby so she can dress his wound properly.

“Oh God, it goes all the way through,” she whispers in horror.  It’s a neat small wound, and it will heal clean, but she feels waves of nausea in her stomach at the thought of what agony it must have given him.  There’s a second on the other hand too, exactly the same.

The next thing she says to him – and the thing he says back to her – silences all of them.

“Marcus,” she says desperately, her voice scraped raw with the pain she’s feeling for what he must have suffered. _“Who did this to you?”_

He looks up at her then, his eyes gentle and kind and full of compassion, as she clutches both his hands ever so gently in her own, caressing them, stroking the rough skin with her soft gentle fingers.  “ALIE did it,” he says to her, his voice firm, but it’s too late for him to spare her.

She remembers.

 _She_ did this.

 _She_ did this to him.

Abby turns away from them all, doubles over, and is suddenly, violently sick.


	3. Clover

Abby knows things.

New things, secret things, things she shouldn’t know.

All of them do.

They orbit each other gingerly, the refugees from the City of Light.  Sky People and Grounders alike, they know things about each other they have no right to.  Things that ought to be private but aren’t.  Thoughts, dreams, memories that were taken from the most secret vaults of their own minds by ALIE, who shared everything with all of them.

Inside the City of Light, none of it mattered.

But it makes reality a nightmare.

Abby doesn’t want to forget.  Not anything, not ever again.  Not after so much was taken from her.

But still, there are things she knows now that she isn’t sure she should.

Not to mention the things all the others know about _her._

It begins immediately, and only gets worse.  Clarke is still only half-conscious when Bellamy carries her inside the Polis tower to her old room (they all have Clarke’s memories, which means Abby can lead the way without thinking).  Raven disconnected before Stage Three began and missed the worst of it.  And the others who are there with them - Indra and Octavia and everyone else - never took the chip.  

But Jackson was there for all of it.  Jackson knows everything.

He knows about the way Abby reached up to take Kane’s face in her hands on the day she thought he was going to die, and about the gentle but firm way he pulled back just in time to stop her, and about how the ghost of that kiss followed her, guiding her footsteps down the hall to Kane’s bedroom, where she closed the door behind her, stared down the startled Miller and Harper, and said “All right.  What’s our plan?”

But he also knows about the heavy rusted mallet and the pair of thick iron nails and the way she ran both towards and away from the sound of Marcus Kane’s voice saying her name.  And Raven knows, and Clarke knows, and everyone in Arkadia knows, and all the Grounders in Polis know.

She can count on two hands the number of people in the entire world who don’t remember, as though they were standing right there, the crunching sound of iron through bone and the pleading look in Marcus’ eyes, as though up until the moment when the nail pierced his hand he’d held onto the belief that she wouldn’t really do it.

_Everyone knows what she did._

She loves him, but it must not have been enough.  She loves him, but it didn’t break the spell.  His palms will be scarred for the rest of his life because this isn’t a fairy tale, it isn’t a nightmare she can wake up from.  She didn't mean to, she didn't know, but still.

She did do it.

They don’t quite know how to speak to each other, after waking up on the ground wherever they fell when the electromagnetic pulse hit the city of Polis.  They look at each other with questions in their eyes.  It feels as though they all remain linked together.  Which they are, in a way.  After the dozenth Grounder warrior or Skaikru guard she barely knows meets her eyes and lays her bare – as she does to them – she begins to feel as though she is standing naked in the middle of the marketplace for all the world to see.

Things don’t get any easier when they came home.

Clarke stays behind in Polis for a few days to help Roan, the new Commander, prepare for Thelonious Jaha’s trial.  Jaha emerged from the City of Light a broken shell of the man he had once been, shattered by the loss of a son he had refused to let himself grieve.  ALIE must have seemed like a gift from heaven to him, then.  That chip must have felt like a miracle.  He could not have known.  He was not in control.

Abby does not want to absolve Thelonious of the things he had done.  So many lives were lost.  So many of their people, so many Grounders, failed to make it out of the City of Light before Clarke and Raven finally managed to destroy it.  Everyone who didn’t disconnect by the time it was shut down now lies dead in the streets of Polis.  (There will be a memorial, later.  She will have to go back.  They’ll all have to go back.  She’ll have to be ready.)  Thelonious wreaked havoc on their whole world, and he knows it.  Her last glimpse of him, as they lead him off to his Grounder prison cell, is a man hunched and bent over, as though carrying a weight that threatens to crush him, and all the light in his eyes is gone.  He’s shattered.

She does not know whether to be glad or sorry.

She finds it difficult to forgive him for the things he’s done, but she still can’t bear the thought of seeing him found guilty.

Because if all those lives lost to the City of Light are truly Thelonious Jaha’s burden to bear – and not that of the A.I. whose mind control caused their deaths – then Abby has nowhere to hide from the scars on Marcus Kane’s hands, and she does not know how she can live with herself after that.

* * * * *

Abby and the others have been back at Arkadia for a week before Clarke comes home.  She'll be back with the others for Jaha’s trial in a few weeks, but for now, all she wants is to be home with Abby.  There are too many ghosts in Polis for Clarke Griffin.

Abby doesn’t know what happened when Clarke crossed over from one City of Light into the other – the second one, where Lexa was – and Clarke won’t talk about it.  But she knows enough about grief to recognize it when she sees it.  She’d tried, once, after Finn, to let Clarke know she understood, but Clarke wasn’t ready to hear it then. 

It’s different now.

Clarke sleeps in Abby’s bed the first three nights she’s home, needing to feel her mother’s arms around her to keep the nightmares at bay.  But there are a lot of empty rooms in Arkadia now, and a lot of other people who can’t be alone at night anymore, so Abby and Bellamy fix up a spacious, unused storage room with salvaged furniture for Clarke, Raven and Octavia to share.  Clarke needs her mother, but she also needs her friends.  She needs to be with the ones who went through this with her.  And they need _her_ too.

But once she’s gone, Abby’s alone at night again, and nights aren't any easier for her than they are for Clarke.

She tries to stay busy enough during the day to keep the City of Light from crowding back into her mind, and sometimes it works, but it’s harder at night.  Her dreams are other people’s memories, which is unsettling enough without contemplating the fact that that means it works in reverse, without wondering whether in Polis some child is waking up screaming because they’re living her memory of watching Jake fly out the airlock; or whether the reason the young guard outside the Chancellor’s office can’t meet her eyes when she goes in to leave some files for Marcus is because he’s thinking about that kiss.

She dreams as Thelonious more than once.  He was the first one in the City of Light, which made his mental connection with ALIE, with all of them, uniquely strong.  They all have Jaha in their heads more than anyone else.  But they didn’t all know him like Abby did, so in a way it’s worse for her, because these are things she remembers too, from different angles.

It’s profoundly strange, the first time it happens – the first night she falls asleep and wakes up on the Ark as Thelonious.  It’s as though she’s watching a play of her own life, but she’s only a minor player.  She watches herself arrive to walk young Clarke home from visiting Wells; but when the door closes, the ghost Abby walks away while she stays behind to make Wells dinner and put him to bed.  She watches herself in Council meetings, disoriented by how different the room looks from Thelonious’ usual chair instead of her own.  She’s forever watching one version of herself walk in and out of rooms while the other stays behind, watching Abby Griffin walk away through of someone else.

It's a strange enough sensation with memories she _was_ in – but it’s even worse for the memories where she wasn’t.

> _Thelonious wants to go home and get drunk, but he can’t._
> 
> _Wells is there, and Wells is furious with him.  He can’t look his father in the eye.  Thelonious didn’t want him at the airlock, didn’t want him to have to see this, but Wells wouldn’t let Clarke go through that alone.  He couldn’t do anything to make it right, but he could show up.  He could_ be _there, so Clarke saw him.  So Clarke would know._
> 
> _Thelonious loves his son for being that kind of person, but he can’t tell him that right now, because Wells just watched his father float Jake Griffin – a man he’s known his entire life – and he knows that tomorrow morning the guards are coming to arrest Clarke.  It's Wells who begs his father for one night’s grace, to let Clarke and Abby have one day together to grieve.  “She won’t say anything about the oxygen_ today _,” Wells says, his voice tight with fury.  “Her father just died.  Can you let her and Abby have each other for_ one goddamn day _?”_
> 
> _Wells doesn't swear, which is how Thelonious knows he's not just sad but angry, which is why he relents and stays Clarke’s arrest for one more day.  And besides, Wells is right.  It’s the right thing to do._
> 
> _Wells always knows the right thing to do._
> 
> _Wells showed up at the airlock._
> 
> _And not everybody did that.  Not everybody who_ should _have been there_ was.
> 
> _When Thelonious arrives at Kane’s quarters, the man is already drunk._
> 
> _“Your absence this morning was conspicuous,” says Thelonious, who doesn’t quite realize until he’s started speaking exactly how pissed he is at Marcus Kane right now.  Kane is the one who arrested Jake, who included Clarke in the charges.  Kane is the one who should have pushed that button.  Thelonious came intending only to serve as witness, but had to execute Jake himself, in front of Clarke and Abby, so he’s here at Kane’s doorstep to deliver a stinging lecture about taking responsibility and making difficult choices, the lecture he’s given Kane so many times.  Kane_ feels _things too much, that’s his problem.  Thelonious thinks there’s the makings of a great chancellor in him, if he can only learn self-control.  So he’s arrived with his reprimand prepared, but it all flies out the window when he opens Kane’s door._
> 
> _Kane is sitting on the floor beneath his window, back against the wall, a nearly-empty bottle of moonshine at his feet.  His hair is a mess, his clothes are askew, and he’s clearly been drinking for hours even though it’s not even noon._
> 
> _He looks up at Thelonious, and his eyes are red with tears and a little glazed over, like Kane doesn’t quite see him._
> 
> _“Is it over?” is all he says, and all Thelonious’ irritation evaporates at the flat, broken tone of his voice._
> 
> _“Yes,” he says, dropping to the ground to sit next to Kane.  “It’s over.”_
> 
> _“And Clarke?”_
> 
> _“Tomorrow,” says Thelonious.  “Wells insisted.”_
> 
> _“Wells is a better man than I am,” says Kane, and the bitterness in his voice is startling.  He’s always been hard on himself, but this is something new, something ugly.  This is self-recrimination calcified into hate, and Thelonious doesn’t know what to say anymore._
> 
> _Kane hands him the bottle of moonshine.  Thelonious takes a long drink and passes it back.  Kane drinks too, sets it down, and is silent for a long, long time._
> 
> _When he finally speaks again, the pain in his voice is so raw, so brutal, that Thelonious actually feels a little sick._
> 
> _“She’s going to hate me forever,” Kane says, and Thelonious has no comfort to give._
> 
> _He suspects it’s probably true._

* * * * *

Marcus stays in Polis.  He’s a clan leader now, he has work to do, and Clarke says he’s established a good rapport with Roan.  For the next few months at least he’ll be traveling back and forth a lot.  He’d expected some resistance to the idea of reinstating Skaikru among the clans, but the ugly truth is that there aren’t enough of their people left for the hard lines between warring factions to matter anymore.  Jaha said he wanted unity among all peoples, and that’s what he got – though not quite the way he intended.  So nobody fights the new Commander’s proclamation that Skaikru is the thirteenth clan once more.  Not even Pike, who returns home to Arkadia a different man altogether, willingly ceding the Chancellor pin back to Kane with a remorse so profound he can look no one in the eye.  The real threat was under his nose all this time, from the moment Thelonious Jaha walked back through those gates, and Pike was too blinded by his hatred of the Grounders to see it.   It will be a long time before Arkadia forgives him, but even longer before he forgives himself. 

If he ever can.

A few weeks ago, Abby would have locked Pike in the brig herself.  But they still need an Earth Skills teacher, and even if he wanted to plot another rebellion – which he clearly doesn’t – the dozen or so survivors of Farm Station left alive after the City of Light shut down aren’t enough to follow him.

She should hate him.  He slaughtered three hundred Grounders, almost fatally wounding Indra – her friend and ally – and he shot Lincoln in the head.  He almost killed Kane.  He wreaked so much destruction.  He hurt so many people.

And yet, he’s the only person her age left in Arkadia who hasn’t been inside her head, which means he’s the only person left who makes her feel _normal._

It’s restful, in a peculiar way, being with Pike.   There are moments when they can pretend like it’s the old days, when they lived on the Ark, before any of this happened.  It doesn’t ever last long – too much has happened since then, and there’s an insurmountable gulf between them made by the fact that Pike would have killed Marcus Kane if Abby and the others hadn’t intervened to save his life.  So they’re not friends, and they never will be.  But she’s too tired to hate anyone anymore.  And she feels grounded when she’s with him.  She never has to wonder, when he looks at her, what secret private memory of hers is circling through his mind.  He only knows what he’s seen himself.  And there are less than a dozen people left in her whole world who see her that way. 

And if she’s being honest with herself, there’s this too.  There’s the fact that they both care deeply about Marcus Kane, but they both did terrible things to him anyway. 

Abby hammered a five-inch nail through the hand of the man she loves, and Charles Pike doesn’t judge her for it – couldn’t if he wanted to – because what he did was worse.

Which means most nights in the mess she eats dinner with Charles Pike.

They rarely speak, except banalities, but it doesn’t take ALIE for her to read his thoughts.  He’s thinking about Kane too.  They never say his name, though.  They just sit in silence, eating their dinner, and then return quietly to their rooms. 

It’s not much.  But it’s something.


	4. Daisy

She finds the book on her ninth day back.

The library is housed in the far back corner of the hangar, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a library, when really it’s just two metal shelves and a smattering of chairs.  But they’re _real books,_ you can hold them in your hand, you can hear the rustle and smell that peculiar scent of dust and paper and knowledge as you turn the pages, as your hand caresses the cloth and leather bindings.  They’re rich and warm and alive, not cold dead words on a handheld computer screen like they had on the Ark.  This used to be the place she came to look for Marcus, when she couldn’t find him in his office or his quarters; now, in his absence, she comes here to think of a way to say the things she doesn’t know how to say.

She runs her hands over the bindings, feeling silky leather beneath her fingertips.  The library was Gina’s project, all these books hand-selected by her.  She’d planned, later when they had more time, to bring back the rest, but Marcus had told her to pace herself.  She was allotted one box of books, once a week, he’d said, they didn’t have room in the Rover for any more than that amidst the crates of more vital supplies.  So she curated the selection with care, and had surprised them all on her first trip up by bringing back nothing but poetry.

“An atlas would have been helpful,” Bellamy had teased her.  “Or a natural history book or two.”

“ _Poisonous Plants of the Northeast_ ,” suggested Raven.  “Something we’ll actually _need_.”

“This _is_ what we need,” said Gina, and she was right.  Within three hours, the waiting list for Gina’s thirty books of poetry was so long that she’d had to create an organizational system, set time limits, and require everyone to sign their books in and out.  It was tedious, but nobody minded.  Because Gina had been right.  This was what they’d needed.  They lived on the ground now, where things like clouds and roses and birdsong were suddenly real, and Gina was the first of all of them to realize they needed an entirely new vocabulary for this new alien world.  And there was something, after all, to walking through the woods on patrol and looking up at the canopy of trees and down towards the soft loamy earth and hearing Wordsworth or Tennyson echo in your mind.

 _Here are cool mosses deep,_  
_And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,_  
 _And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,_  
 _And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep._

Marcus had been her best customer.

Abby stops suddenly, bracing her hand on the shelf to steady her, as the wave of memories passes through.  They’re not hers, she doesn’t want them, they belong to Raven, but she has to close her eyes and breathe until they subside.

> _Raven and Gina drinking by the firepit until midnight, laughing, arm in arm._
> 
> _Gina pouring Bellamy a drink and flirting just a little, just the right amount, making him laugh as he walks away, causing Raven to lean across the bar and smack her on the side of the head and say “Ask him out, dumbass, or I’m asking him for you.”_
> 
> _Gina in the back of the Rover with Harper while Raven drives, all three in a fit of hysterical giggles as Gina reads excerpts from a slim cloth-bound volume of prim Victorian erotica._
> 
> _Gina’s panicked voice on the walkie-talkie at Mount Weather, the night the terrible thing happened._
> 
> _Raven and Sinclair thrown backwards through the air by the force of a violent blast, the only survivors of the bomb that destroyed Mount Weather._
> 
> _Raven does not go to the memorial.  She tells herself it’s because she can’t watch Bellamy cry, but she knows that isn’t the truth.  The truth is that she thinks she could have saved Gina if she’d had two legs that worked, if she could have run, and even though she knows it’s irrational she’s afraid to walk into that room because she’s afraid it will hang over her like a shadow, the weight of that guilt._
> 
> _Raven does not go to the library._
> 
> _Not then.  Not ever._

Abby pulls her hand away.  The poetry shelf is too much, perhaps.  Maybe the other shelf is safer.  Nonfiction, history, science.  Not so many ghosts over here.

She traces her fingertips over the spines, reading gold-stamped title after title.

William Gibbon, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._  
C.S. Lewis, _The Problem of Pain._  
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, _All the President’s Men._  
Julia Child, _My Life In France._  
Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time._  
Abraham Lincoln, _Collected Writings._  
The Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Talmud, the Quran.  
Anne Frank, _The Diary of a Young Girl_.  
Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species._  
Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations._  
Galileo Galilei _, Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences._  
Thucydides, _History of the Peloponnesian War._

And then her fingers pause on a slim silk-bound volume.  It’s the color, at first, that’s what stops her.  Everything else on the shelf is weighty and substantial, bound in leather or in sober navy blue or black cloth.  But this one is a springy sage green, with a winding pattern of gold-stamped ivy up the spine, and she pulls it out to get a closer look.

Greenaway, Kate.  _Language of Flowers._ 1884.

Her eyes widen as she flips through it, past the frontispiece and title page to the illustrations contained inside. 

“ **Acacia:** _Friendship_.”

“ **African Marigold:** _Vulgar Minds_.”

“ **Allspice** : _Compassion_.”

 “ **Aloe** : _Grief, Religious Superstition_.”

“ **Amaranth** : _Immortality, Unfading Love_.”

“ **Ambrosia** : _Love Returned_.”

She closes the book, and takes it with her.

They learned about this in medical school, the history and superstitions of plants.  Abby has never seen ginger before in her life but she knows it was used to cure nausea.  She knows there are varieties of moss that possess antiseptic properties and can be used to poultice a wound.  But this is all new. 

She’s discovered a new language.

She can’t speak to Marcus through words – she doesn’t have the right ones yet – but Lincoln taught her every leaf and flower and tree in the forest.  Lincoln would approve of this, she thinks.  Lincoln, who used to leave white flowers in the trees to signal to Octavia.  (Another memory that doesn’t belong to Abby, this one Clarke’s.)  Lincoln, whose sketchbook is now Octavia’s most treasured possession.  She wonders if he ever read this book.  She wonders if the flowers’ meanings to Grounders are the same.

She takes the book back to her room and spends hours paging through it, pronouncing delightfully unfamiliar words out loud – “ _Tuberose,” “Nasturtium,” “Zinnia.”  “Vervain,” “Belladonna,” “Phlox_ ” – and marveling of the specificity of the sentiments that a mere plant could convey – “Domestic virtue” (sage), “Your qualities, like your charms, are unequalled” (peach blossom), “Alas! For my poor heart” (red carnation).

It takes her a long time, but she finally finds what she’s looking for.

There’s no one word for it, for the thing she’s feeling, the thing she needs to say.  It takes her hours of careful reading to make her list, and two days with a pair of shears and a bucket and Octavia to find everything she needs.

She lets herself into his bedroom, placing little metal cups full of blossoms and greenery all over the room.  Rosemary and willow – remembrance and grief – go beneath the painting she likes, the one with the man standing alone looking out over the cliff.  They seem to fit there. 

On his desk, bluebells for constancy and wild geraniums for steadfast faithfulness, and a little sprig of black poplar too, for courage.  He sat at that desk and planned a rebellion, he risked his life so many times, and she needs him to know that she sees him, that she loves him for that. 

Next, a metal cup containing a cluster of dandelion (“healing from emotional pain”), surrounded by purple hyacinth (“please forgive me”) goes on the top of his dresser.  He’ll come here first, when he enters the room, to hang his jacket on the hook beside it, and she wants the hyacinth to be the first thing he sees.  Nothing else means anything without it.

And daisies, last of all.  Daisies everywhere.  White ones and yellow ones, tied in heaps, like liquid sunlight in the somber green-and-gray darkness of his room.  _Hope,_ she thinks to herself over and over as she places them around the room.  That’s what he’s always been to her.  That’s what they both need now.

These aren’t things she can say in words.  She says them to the flowers, and not to him.  But Marcus Kane will know.

She leaves the book on his pillow and closes the door behind her.

* * * * *

The next day, Marcus Kane comes back to Arkadia.

He arrives in the middle of the night, and doesn’t come to see her.  She spends all of the next day in Medical – the kids did a remarkably good job, but she’s insistent on checking everyone’s neck incisions nonetheless, and it keeps her and Jackson working late.  He doesn’t come to see her there, either. 

Disappointment thuds dully in her chest as her heart sinks further and further with every passing hour that he doesn’t walk through the doorway.  She lingers, fussing with paperwork that could wait until tomorrow, she eats her lunch and her dinner at her desk, wanting to stay here where he can find her as long as she possibly can, just in case.

Just in case he got her message and he knows what it means.

But he doesn’t come.

She shouldn’t be disappointed, she knows that.  This is no more than she deserves.

It may not have been what she hoped, but it’s what she expected.

Finally, Jackson shoos her out the door to send her back to her quarters for bed, and she trudges silently down the long hallway to her quarters.

She did the best she could, she supposes that’s some consolation.

He may not have forgiven her, he may not be ready to love her again – or to let her love him – but he knows, at least.  He knows how she feels.  She said it.  She did all she could do.

But still.

He didn’t come.

She balls her hands into tight little fists to swallow the tears back.  Not now, while she’s still in the hallway. Not out here, where she might run into people.  She’ll be inside her own room in a matter of moments, she can hold out until then.

 _But he didn’t come,_ whispers a voice in her head, and she picks up the pace, practically running towards her room to make it through that doorway before the tears take over.  _He’s here.  He’s back at Arkadia.  He’s been back since dawn.  He knew where you were, and he didn’t come._

She rounds the corner at breakneck speed, nearly colliding with a surprised David Miller, and by the time she makes it into her room and bolts the door behind her, she’s too blind from unshed tears to see.

She closes the door, leans back against it, eyes pressed tightly closed, and then the dam breaks, she can’t hold back any longer, and big, gulping noisy sobs overtake her body. 

She’s crying so hard she doesn’t hear him until he’s said her name three times, and even then, she thinks she’s imagining it until the moment she’s in his arms.

The sudden shock of desperate grief evaporating into dizzy relief leaves her shaky, and does nothing to hold back the tears.  She buries her face in his chest, torn apart by weeping, and for a long time they just stand there, arms entangled, as he holds her close and lets her cry.  “Abby,” he says again, holding her close, pressing kisses against her soft hair, stroking her back with his strong, comforting hands.  “Abby, what’s wrong?”

But it’s a long time before she can speak again.

Finally, after a long, long moment, she pulls away, wiping her eyes, and gets her first good look around.

The room is covered in violets.

Violets on her bedspread and dresser, violets all over the floor.  Violets sprinkled on every flat surface in the whole room.  She doesn’t need the book to know what the violets mean, she had wanted to pick some for him, but Octavia had informed her that they didn’t grow any closer than three miles away.

_Devotion._

He’d walked three miles to find them.

He watches her look around the room, eyes wide with wonder, still shining with tears, and it’s only when she finally turns back to him that she realizes what he’s holding in his hand.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come see you sooner,” he says, holding out a bouquet of yellow tulips.  “It took me forever to find these.”

“Marcus,” she begins, but doesn’t know what to say.  “Where – “

“I went back to Mount Weather,” he tells her, and her eyes snap up towards him, startled.  “The bomb blew the roof off the mountain first,” he explains, “and scattered wreckage everywhere.  Don’t ask me how it happened, but one whole box of tulips survived the blast.  I found them half a mile away, in perfect condition.  The box had even landed upright, so the soil could drain.  It was like a miracle.  We planted two,” he said, “and brought the others home for you.”

"Who's 'we?'"

"I needed help translating your message," he confesses, "and I don't know enough about what grows where to have the first idea what I was looking for."

She laughs.  "Did you conscript Octavia too?"

"No," he says, with something peculiar in his voice.  "It was Pike."

She stares up at him, eyes wide.  "Pike?" she exclaims in disbelief.

"He helped me identify all the plants," Kane says.  "And he came with me up to Mount Weather.  We found a few dozen bits and pieces from the greenhouse that survived the blast, and we planted them all.  By next spring, there will be green things growing at Mount Weather."

"I can't believe he did that."

"It's not much," he admits.  "Two flowers amidst all that death.  But it’s something.”

“You went to Mount Weather with Pike to pick flowers for me,” she murmurs, taking the impossibly yellow bundle from his hands and stroking the velvety petals.  She’s only seen tulips once, from a distance, when they were packing up root vegetables from the Mount Weather greenhouse.  She had no idea the petals would be so soft.

“I was glad we found them," he says softly.  "They were the only thing that felt right."  And Abby realizes he’s holding the book out to her.

Roses and tulips she skipped over, knowing she’d never be able to find them.  She had relied only on the plants that grew near Arkadia.  But Kane had taken Pike in the Rover all the way up to Mount Weather because he’d had something to say to her that could only be said one way.

“Read it,” he says to her, and she does.

 _“Tulips (Yellow),”_ says the page he’s holding open to her.  _“Hopeless love.”_

“No,” she says to him unexpectedly, smiling through tears.  “Not hopeless at all.”  And in a heartbeat, both book and blossoms are forgotten as her hands tangle in his hair and she pulls him down to kiss her.


	5. Gladiolus

 

It isn’t like their first kiss, where Abby – overwhelmed with affection and compassion – pressed her lips with infinite tenderness against his cheek to stop his heart from breaking with worry about Octavia.  And it isn’t like the second one, where the ghost of the kiss they didn’t get outside Kane’s prison cell finally caught up with him the moment he realized she wasn’t leaving Arkadia with the rest of them and he couldn’t leave her without it.

The first was comfort, the second a goodbye.

This is something different.

This is something new.

There hasn’t been anyone in either of their beds for a very long time.  Jake Griffin has been dead for a year and a half, Marcus’ on-off relationship with Callie Cartwig died the moment he sent Abby to the airlock, and there’s been too much else right in front of them for that to be a pressing concern.  Not when the Ark was dying.  Not when they were crash-landing to Earth and hunting for Clarke and the kids.  Not when they were at war.  And by the time life began to settle down, just a little, after the Battle of Mount Weather – by the time the Sky People found themselves thinking about what the future might look like, found themselves planting and growing things, found themselves realizing that they lived here and it was time to put down roots – Clarke was gone.  Abby did the best she could, both as doctor and Chancellor, but she didn’t sleep much or eat much and had very little peace.  And if Marcus had begun to wonder, during those three months, whether perhaps the thing between them that had once been animosity was now something altogether different, he knew Abby well enough to recognize that this was not the time.

Then she had kissed his cheek, and something like hope had begun to dawn inside his chest.

_Maybe . . ._

_Maybe . . ._

But he didn’t know.

He didn’t know until her soft broken voice murmured “I can’t do this again” as her beautiful face crumpled before him, and he knew it then with all the force of a lightning bolt, knew it so clearly that he could never un-know it again.

She was in love with him.

And he was in love with her.

And in less than ten minutes, he would be dead.

Nothing in his entire life had ever been harder than pulling away from her in that moment as she leaned in to kiss him.  His whole body ached for hers.  He closed his eyes, he faltered just for a moment, she was right there, he wanted her so badly . . . But what good would it do her, after he was gone?  It would just be one more thing to grieve.  He had already fallen all the way, but maybe it wasn’t too late for her to save herself.  Maybe if he pulled away without a kiss or a goodbye, it would help, later, to make the wound heal clean.

_I am in love with you,_ he had thought as the guards led him away, _and I will never see you again._

His only consolation, as he turned his back and walked away from her shattered, tear-stained face, was that at least death could not possibly be worse.

Oh, but it isn’t like that now.

Abby kisses him with her whole heart, and something long dormant wakes up inside his body and he feels more alive than he’s ever felt in his life.  Her mouth is soft and hungry and insistent on his, and it’s not like before when he only had time for the briefest of urgent kisses with Lincoln and Octavia standing mere feet away.  There are no more enemies and no more wars and they’re in a bedroom that smells like violets with a door that locks and nowhere to be until tomorrow and he is struck senseless by how desperately he wants her.  Not just loves her, cares for her, tries to protect her . . . He feels all those things, he’ll never be able to stop feeling all those things, they’re engraved onto his soul.  But there’s also a hundred thousand other things he’s never let himself consider.  The strong, supple arms and legs he’s never in twenty-five years seen bare.  The hollow between her throat and shoulder, where he has a sudden fierce desire to bury his mouth, kissing the white skin over and over as his hands slip silkily through her hair.  The soft murmuring sounds she makes as she kisses him that stir something deep and low and hungry in his belly, wondering what sounds she would make if . . .

“Abby,” he tries to say, but it comes out as a low, choked groan, and he has to pull away to look her in the eyes before this goes any further.  “Before we . . . before I . . . “  But he can’t go on, his face beginning to grow warm and flushed with embarrassment, still afraid – even with her arms around him – to ask for the thing he wants in case he’s wrong.

But Abby isn’t embarrassed, and she isn’t afraid.  “Yes,” she says to him, chin tilted up, head high, eyes glowing with affection and desire.  “Yes.”

He swallows hard.  “Are you sure?” he presses her again.  “Because if you – I would _never_ – “

“You filled my room with flowers,” she points out, smiling up at him. 

“Well, you started it.”

She laughs at that, her eyes dancing with merriment, and it’s her real laugh, the one he hasn’t heard in a long, long time, and it’s the laugh that does it.  Seeing her _happy_.  Abby Griffin hasn’t been happy in so long.  But it’s time, he thinks.  Time for all of them to begin moving forwards, toward the light.  Toward something real.

Time for him to take the next step toward Abby. 

So he does.

When his hands drift to her waist, and then push the soft threadbare cotton up enough that he touches her skin, she’s so startled that she lets out a gasp.  This is a line, and they’re crossing it, they’re leaving their old selves behind them, because Marcus Kane’s hands are gliding slowly, slowly, slowly up the sides of her body and taking all the fabric with them, and she only has time for a moment’s self-consciousness as he drops her shirt and bra on the floor before all conscious thought leaves her because his mouth is buried between her breasts and Abby can’t think anymore.

Jake never had a beard.  Abby had no idea they could do this.  Marcus holds her in firm, sure hands – one high on her bare back and one gripping her hip – and bends his head to press his mouth against first one soft white rounded curve, and then the other.  His lips are impossibly soft, his tongue insistent and yearning, but it’s the shivery-sweet scratch of his beard against her delicate skin that begins to set her on fire.  She’s never felt anything like it before, and she wants it everywhere.  “More,” she whispers, tangling her hands in his hair and pulling him in even deeper.  “More.” 

So he gives her more, opening his mouth and taking her nipple inside it, and she gasps.  His hands tighten around her, holding her in place as he devours her breast, and he feels her melt and dissolve in his arms, soft and hungry and open but with a low, insistent hum of ravenous yearning radiating off her too.  She wants him, and she doesn’t want him gentle.

A savage kick of excitement shoots through his whole body and he tears off his own shirt, freeing his bare chest to Abby’s questing mouth as he fumbles with her zipper.  “Are we really doing this?” he breathes into her ear, his voice a raw whisper, as he feels her hands drift to his waist and begin to unfasten his jeans, pushing them down off his hips so he can toe off his boots and step out of them.

“I swear to God, Marcus,” she murmurs, “I think I’ll die if we don’t.”

It flips a switch inside them both, those words, and clothes go flying.  A heartbeat later there’s nothing separating them but a foot of empty space and the sudden collapsing self-consciousness that crashes down onto him as Abby takes a step back so she can gaze with undisguised want at his naked body.  He can hardly look at her.  She’s too perfect, too beautiful, and she’s right here, ready for him, wanting him, giving him permission to kiss her anywhere, touch her anywhere, seize any pleasure he wants . . . and he’s too overwhelmed to know quite how to begin.

So in the end it’s her that leads the way, taking him by the hand over to the violet-strewn bed, holding out her arms for him to climb in after her.  She sinks down onto the pillows and pulls him down to lie outstretched above her as they adjust to the new sensation of feeling every inch of their bodies pressed warmly together.  His cock – still halfway soft, but not for long – rests gently against her hip, and he can feel the deliciously sharp press of her nipples against his chest.

It’s simultaneously too perfect to be real, and the most real thing he’s ever known in his life.

“You have violets in your hair,” he says, smiling, as he reaches down with a gentle hand to brush them away, and she takes his face in her hands and guides his mouth down to her own.

“Kiss me,” she whispers, “and don’t stop.”

So he doesn’t.

It was overwhelming enough, kissing her fully dressed while standing in the middle of the room, but he thinks he might faint from the dizzying sensory pleasure of kissing her like this.  Warm blankets heaped around them, the delicate scent of crushed violet petals beneath their bodies floating around them like a spring breeze, the impossible softness of her skin, the way her hips rise up from the bed as his mouth consumes hers.

He startles himself as much as her when one hand slips down the curved planes of her stomach and between her thighs to rest tentatively, gently, against the warm center of her, savoring the alluring, humid dampness and the soft silky hair and the way her eyes open wide with astonished delight as his fingers move against her.

“Oh God,” she whispers.  “Marcus.  Don’t stop.”

He buries his mouth in her shoulder, kissing her hungrily as his hand moves lower, presses in deeper, fingers gliding through silky wetness.  When he finds her clit for the first time, her entire body flinches in stunned, sudden pleasure, hips bucking hard against him as a frantic gasp bursts out of her.  Startled by the sudden force of her whole body rising up into his, he feels her wince in pain and realizes he’s bitten her shoulder.

Instantly he pulls away, contrite and embarrassed, and is surprised to see her eyes glowing not with recrimination or teasing, but with an even wilder lust than before.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, but she shakes her head.

“Don’t be,” she whispers recklessly.  “I liked it.”

“You did?”

“In the City of Light, I couldn’t feel anything,” she explains.  “Not good things, not bad things.  Nothing at all.  Everything was numb.  You have no idea how good it feels to _feel_ , Marcus,” she murmurs, pulling him back down towards her.  “Do it again.”

“Again?”

“Please,” she breathes into his skin as he bends his head back to her throat.  “Please.”

So he isn’t gentle anymore after that, and neither is she.

He buries his mouth in her shoulder, no longer afraid, no longer holding himself back, no longer restraining the full force of his passion for her.  There’s always been a part of him, with Abby, that holds himself in check.  He’s so much bigger than she is, he’s so afraid to hurt her, after so much of their past has been shaped by his cruelty.  He’s always so careful to be gentle with her now.  When he kissed her for the first time, the day he left Arkadia, it took the violent exertion of every muscle in his body to stop himself from seizing her in his arms with enough force to lift her off the ground, then slam them both up against the wall and take her right there.  But there were people there, and there wasn’t time to kiss her the way he wanted to kiss her – wild and raw and hungry, without ceasing, until desire swallowed them both whole.

But now there’s nothing in the way.  “I’m not made of glass, Marcus,” she laughs a little when he palms her hip in one hand, clutching it with light, tentative fingers.  So he presses in harder, grabbing her flesh, seizing the soft creamy white skin hard enough to leave a faint mark for a moment after he lets go, and she bites her lip, nodding at him, _yes, like that, but more,_ so he grips her harder, harder, and his other hand between her thighs isn’t gentle either, his thumb and forefinger pinch lightly at her clit until she gasps.  Her arms clutch wildly at his back, nails digging into the skin, and she nibbles at his shoulder between rough little gasps as he strokes her faster and faster.

He can’t believe this is happening.  It would have been enough just to be permitted to hold her.  He never imagined _this,_ his hand buried in her wetness and her little teeth digging into his skin and her hips thrusting up and up as she pants his name. 

He wants so badly to make her come.  She was numb for so long, she’s begged him to make her _feel,_ and he can sense the climax beginning to rise up in her as her gasps grow heavier and deeper and her eyes – fixed on his – grow distant and unfocused, overwhelmed with sensation.  He hasn’t done this in a long time, made a woman come with just his hand, but he can’t believe how good it feels to touch Abby like this.  He can’t believe how good it feels, even though it hurts, to feel her hands claw desperately at his strong hard back as she finally, finally tumbles over the edge.

She isn’t quiet about it, and it _shocks_ him how erotic it is to hear Abby Griffin come in his arms.  It’s a soft breathy whimpering at first, rising and rising until it’s nearly all breath and no sound, just strangled panting noises, until the wave crests inside her and her entire body bucks upwards once, twice, three times, as a wild cry escapes her.  Then she clutches at him desperately, pulling him down onto her with his full weight, and lies gasping for breath beneath him.

How will he ever be able to get out of this bed again, now that he knows Abby Griffin makes sounds like that?

His whole body feels electrified, like a thousand tiny lightning bolts are shooting up and down his skin.  He wants her to make those sounds again. 

“That was so good,” she sighs happily. “You make me feel so good.”

“Abby,” he begins, but she places a finger over his lips, hushing him.  He’s hard as iron now, frantic with desire, and he knows it defeats the purpose if he has to ask her permission before he can be reckless with her, even though that’s what she wants, but he feels shyness creep over him again.

“Why are you scared?” she asks him, hands caressing his face, her thumb grazing his lower lip. 

“I don’t know,” he tells her honestly, and she guides his head down to rest against her shoulder, stroking his hair, soothing him, relaxing him.

“You aren’t going to hurt me,” she murmurs.  “I won’t break.  Let yourself go, Marcus.  I want all of you.”

“Abby, I – “

“All of you,” she repeats, in a low throbbing whisper, and then he hisses sharply through gritted teeth because her hand is suddenly, startlingly gripping his hard cock.

Marcus Kane is a big man.  All of him is big.  He’s never let himself _go_ with a woman, never opened the floodgates and released the full force of his strength.  He’s always holding at least a little back.  And so as Abby slides one hand down his back to grip his ass in hard, insistent fingers, and guides his cock between her thighs with the other, his muscles are coiled tightly in restraint.  He enters her slowly, the thick pulsing tip of his heavy cock pushing her open, and she lets out a soft _“oh”_ of surprise, staring up at him with wide eyes, sliding her hands up his body to grip his shoulders as he sinks into her.

“More,” she whispers, as he slowly slips inside inch by inch, and it’s not enough, she’s impatient, she’s starving, and her hips rise up with abrupt force at the exact moment he begins to sink down.  They crash together, shocking the breath out of Abby’s lungs as her hot, slick wetness seizes hold of Kane and pulls him in so far and so fast that he stretches her open and fills her all the way to the brim.

Her stunned, choked groan as his cock drives forcefully into her sounds enough like pain that he shifts his weight to pull out, but she won’t let him.  “No, no, no,” she begs, shaking her head in desperation, “don’t stop.”  Her hands roam hungrily all over his ass and his back, holding him in place.  “Just like that,” she whispers, eyes dazed and yearning.  “Please.”

“Do you – ” He swallows uncomfortably, unsure how to ask her this.  “Does it feel good if I – do you want it that hard?”

“Harder,” she breathes.  “As hard as you can.”

“Abby – “

“As hard as you can,” she says again, her lips brushing his as she murmurs the words.  “I want all of you, Marcus.  Please, baby, let go.”

He thinks he might die from this.  Not just from the throbbing heat he’s still buried inside, but from hearing her _talk_ about it in her low, smoky voice.   

From Abby telling him what she wants.

Abby _begging him to fuck her._

“As hard as you can,” she pleads again, lifting one perfect smooth thigh to wrap around him and draw him in tighter, and after that he isn’t quite sure _why,_ again, he’s resisting this?

So he lets the dam break, and he thrusts with incredible force, hips lifting up and crashing down into her, and if he had any doubts at all they evaporate at the way her eyes light up as he bottoms out inside her again.  So he does it again, and then again, and then again, until the rickety bed frame is creaking and slamming against the wall, and somehow it’s both fucking and making love at the same time, half impossible tenderness and half wild animal hunger, and for the first time in his whole life he’s not holding anything back, he’s letting himself go inside the only woman who’s ever insisted on _all_ of him, the only woman who’s ever been strong enough to bear his weight.

_“Oh,”_ she gasps, over and over, as his thick, shining cock pistons in and out of her.  “Oh God, Marcus, yes.  Just like that.  Please.  _Please._   Just like that.”

“Abby,” he groans into her neck, and his mouth swallows up hers in a wild, breathless kiss.

It keeps her tethered, just that little ribbon of pain threading through the vast ocean of pleasure.  It reminds her that she’s alive.  The grip of his fingers digging into her soft white hips, the relentless pressure of his massive cock pressing her open, the scratch of his beard against her soft white breasts and throat, the way he bites and nibbles at her lower lip.  ALIE is gone.  ALIE is dead.  There’s no one in her mind but her now.  Marcus is inside her, but it’s different, because she invited him in.  She offered him her body.  But her thoughts are her own, he only knows what she tells him, so she gets the long-forgotten pleasure of telling a person what she wants using words she’s chosen herself.  He knows her, he can read her, he’s one step ahead most of the time, he’s already mapped her body and figured out what she likes, but it isn’t because he invaded her, took her over, smashed her free will; it’s because he pays attention. 

Abby likes being possessed like this, dominated like this.  She likes his big, heavy body, all taut lines and hard muscle and scarred golden-brown skin thatched with silky dark hair, pressing her down into the mattress with relentless weight, a wall of iron between her and the world.  She likes the rough grip of his hands, drifting from her waist to her shoulders to her hands, holding onto her so tightly that no force could drag her away.  She’s gasping and trembling and crying out as he grunts hungrily above her, his cock buried in her depths, and her whole body is on fire, yet she’s never felt so _safe._

She wants him to come first, she wants to feel him burst inside her.  And she came already, so it’s only fair.  She arches her back and rises up to meet him, wrapping her thighs around him to pull him so deeply inside that they both feel faint.  “Oh God,” he groans brokenly as she feels the impossibly powerful muscles of his ass flex and contract where her fingers dig roughly into the skin.  “Oh my God, Abby.”

“Marcus,” she chokes out, as he slams inside her so deep that he reaches the secret pleasure spot buried deep inside her, causing a jolt of pleasure so fierce that she nearly screams, and then neither of them can hold back anymore.  Marcus lets out a raw, low, primitive groan as his warm wetness pours forth and he collapses, spent and trembling, against her chest, still thrusting as hard as he can until she comes too, only a few heartbeats later, and even more frantically than the first time.

Marcus, sweaty and spent, rests his head against her chest and lets her hold him with infinite tenderness as they feel their breath and heartbeats soften back to normal.

“I’ve never,” he tries to say, and stops himself.  “It’s _never_ – “

“Me too,” she whispers into his hair, and neither of them can say anything else after that.

He pulls softly out of her and she curls up behind him, arms wrapped tight around his waist, mouth pressing soft kisses between his shoulder blades.

For the first time in longer than they can remember, they both sleep well.


End file.
